


If you're not the one for me

by lotsofstuffandpaper



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Civil War, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:03:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5514932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotsofstuffandpaper/pseuds/lotsofstuffandpaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I thought you weren’t picking a side”, Steve jeers, his face stone as he pushes away from the kitchen island and picks up his bag, leaving Maria alone with a dirty cup of coffee and her heart rapidly thumping against her ribcage. </p><p>The Avengers break up and Maria is left watching the world fall apart between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you're not the one for me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [throwninthelionsden (theblacksheep)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theblacksheep/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy reading this, even if it's more angst than slowburn. Merry Christmas!

“Agent Hill.”

 

“Not an agent anymore, Rogers.”  A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. She’s leaning against the long counter of the shared kitchen, carefully watching him as he steps across the open room, a large duffel in hand.

 

It’s dark outside, the sun not yet starting to rise and the coffee in her hands is fresh, steaming hot and dark. Steve tries to smile back, but his eyes stay matt, his palms now pressed flat against the top of the kitchen island opposite Maria.

 

“You should be asleep”, he says, not quite meeting her gaze. Without his uniform he looks smaller. Maria doesn’t answer, just takes a sip of coffee.

 

After a while he grabs one of the dirty mugs left on the granite countertop and pours himself a cup of coffee as well. He doesn’t drink it.

 

Maria wants to be anywhere save the stifling silence surrounding them. As she takes in Steve’s strained features her gut aches like he is asking her to shoot him out of the sky again.

This is going to end one way only, she might as well get it over with quickly.

 

“I’m not picking a side.”

 

“Except you clearly are”, Steve lets out in frustrated huff.

 

He’s hurting and she understands that he thinks he has to protect his friend at all costs, but he is letting his emotions severely impair his judgement. She has to be the sensible one here, but it still pains her to see him look at her like he can never trust her again.

 

“I think that both of you are being irresponsible.” 

And she knows it’s not what he wants to hear, but it’s all she’s got. She is done cleaning up disasters that could have been avoided.

 

“That’s it? Irresponsible?” He is trying to drag everything out of her, to expose what he’s sure she must be hiding, to make someone else hurt so that maybe his pain will cease.

 

“Yes. You are being irresponsible, childish, idiots who are dragging everyone around you into your petty personal conflict instead. I can’t stop it, but I sure as hell won’t be part of it either. I don’t work for either of you. Not anymore. You can’t continue to put yourself above the law.”

 

 She has her hands clenched at her sides, the sharp nails digging into her palms.

 

“I didn’t…I’m not afraid of you”, he spits, his shoulders hunched. His eyes are fixed directly at her now, startlingly blue and pissed. She knows it’s not only directed at her, it’s directed at the government and Tony as well, and mostly, she assumes, at Natasha.

 

“Maybe you should be.”

 

It’s out before she has time to process her thoughts and Maria can see his eyes freeze shut right then.

 

“I thought you weren’t picking a side”, Steve jeers, his face stone as he pushes away from the kitchen island and picks up his bag, leaving Maria alone with a dirty cup of coffee and her heart rapidly thumping against her ribcage. He’s gone before she can react and find herself fighting for something she’s not sure she even wants.

 

She has just cradled her own coffee again when Natasha slinks down the stairs, hair tousled and face sleepy.

 

“He yell at you too?” she asks while she leans up on her toes to find a mug in the top drawers.

 

“No. No, he didn’t.” Maria wonders if Steve actually physically yelled at the former agent. It doesn’t seem possible, but then the impossible has been her life for quite some time now, so maybe he did after all.

 

“That bad, huh?” Natasha asks as she pours milk into her Captain America mug. Maria gestures at the mug, raising an eyebrow in question.

 

“Oh, I didn’t realize you put stock in sentimental symbols and the like”, Natasha almost smirks. 

 

“I meant the milk”, she shoots back a little too quickly and Natasha knows, she always knows.   She is stirring cocoa into her milk, loudly clanking the spoon against the sides.  

 

“Sometimes people break apart. There’s nothing you can do about that. You just have to learn to live with it.” 

 

So they stand in silence, sipping their drinks and waiting for the sun to rise behind the glass fronts of Stark Tower.

 

 

 ~~~~

 

 

“Did you know?” Steve asks, his head tilted to the side a bit, the expression on his face soft and open like he thinks he already knows her answer. Maria keeps her eyes on the cup of scalding hot coffee clasped in hands that are cold even when the rest of her body is sweating in the humid summer weather. She unlaces her fingers to pick at the black fabric of her skirt, rubbing over the still damp stain of coffee spilled earlier.

 

It took them eleven days this time. Eleven days of destruction, one million seconds of pointless fighting and now Peggy Carter is gone. They buried her this afternoon.  

 

“You’ve got to let me keep my secrets.”

 

Steve flinches, his eyes flickering down to his hands folded in his lap. It’s the answer he probably knew was coming, but it’s not the one he’d like. Then again, what she tells him usually isn’t the stuff he wants to hear, so he really should be used to it by now.

 

“I thought you weren’t afraid of me.”

 

The past days have ripped him wide open and it’s not fair at all for her to push right into the bloody, exposed parts of him. It’s hard to comprehend how he is still alive when the right thing to do is all he believes himself to be and the things he thought good and righteous just keep falling to pieces every other year.

 

“Maybe I’m a liar” he says and the raw honesty in his voice punches her straight in the gut.

 

She has the sudden urge to grab his lapels and pull him close, needing to feel him solid and alive, breathing puffs of hot air against her cheek. She wants him to rage angry and reckless, spitting truth and hurt and all the fear no one asks about.

Instead she shuffles closer on the wooden park bench, settling her head on his shoulder and breathing in the faint smell of soap and hot skin. His arm wraps around her waist, fingers firmly settling over her coat. The pressure of his hand does nothing to squelch the tremors bubbling in her stomach.

 

Maria’s feelings slither through the cracks inside her like slime, oily and slick, coating her lungs in sticky liquid until her breath catches and she fears with every word and every glance her insides will be turned out for him to see, stare at and judge and toss aside or burn too deep.

 

He murmurs, “Maria, I’m sorry” into the crook of her neck as though maybe that’s where he lost himself.

 

Two weeks ago he was a mess and now the love falls from his lips too easily. Where before he couldn’t even whisper he is now shouting and his mouth may speak, but his hands are trembling, like he is desperate to fall in love. Steve is full of lost hope and empty promises, promises he feels obligated to make and she doesn’t want them.

 

“Pepper and I have a proposal for the new Registration Act”, Maria utters.

 

He doesn’t respond, just pulls his hand tighter around her waist.

 

“I’m sorry too”, she mouths at her cold coffee eventually.  

 

 


End file.
